Downtime - Marc Platt [61]
Heads had appeared on the wall above, staring down. But they hadn’t seen the bird-boy, or where he’d landed, face down and senseless in the garbage.
‘Sir,’ croaked the vagrant, scampering up. ‘Can’t leave you here, sir. They’ll be after you. They’ll put you in a cage, they will, sir. You come with me. I’ll see you right, sir.’
He lifted the insensible boy, who proved as light as a bundle of feathers, and carried him home. His home – a disused garage with all mod secondhand cons: collections of knick-knacks, music-hall posters. All of it recycled, most of it nicked.
‘You stay there, sir.’ He laid the unconscious boy on his bed and pulled down the sacking that covered the garage door.
They would be out hunting, he was sure of that. But this was his prize. No one else’s.
The boy moaned a little, but he was still out to the world.
Harrods began to rifle systematically through the boy’s coat pockets. There was precious little to speak of a couple of pens and a crumpled hanky. He found a mobile phone, which he pocketed, although he had no one to call. Then his fingers closed on a tightly packed bundle. It was a wad of tenners held tight with a rubber band. Harrods couldn’t believe his luck.
The boy was bleeding loaded.
His hand suddenly clamped round Harrods’ wrist. The tramp dropped the money and struggled. He was held in a vice.
‘Bloody Chilly, I’ll break your fingers.’
The vice squeezed tighter, but the boy was still asleep, his head turning fitfully in the grip of an unknown nightmare.
The traffic was the worst the Brigadier had ever seen. Bumper to bumper all the way into the City. He had sat in the same position for twenty minutes. He was already late and he couldn’t even move far enough to reach a side street where he could park and walk.
Ahead, the traffic lights were flickering through their sequence like demented seaside illuminations. The air was getting thick with exhaust fumes and the blaring of angry car horns. The offices seemed to be emptying of workers, who were thronging the streets like sightseers. Tempers were flaring among the stranded motorists.
He tried to listen to the radio, but the reception was terrible and he could pick up only one station. The pap-brained presenter kept burbling on with traffic reports. London was in total gridlock, extending from the central zone out as far as the suburbs. To compound matters, the entire Underground system had failed and was closing down.
‘Well, is it Friday the Thirteenth and they didn’t tell us?’
wittered the presenter. ‘Seems like that case of computer flu I told you about is spreading. They’ve just announced they’re shutting down all major airports and that’s on top of the rail networks. Can you believe it? Don’t know how you’re gonna get home tonight. That’s if you got anything at work to work with. So why not stay tuned for news and chaos updates with New Wor..
The Brigadier snapped the radio off and closed his eyes.
The sun through the window and the heavy air were making him drowsy. His head started to nod.
A loud blast on a nearby car horn brought him up with a start. Ahead of him, through the stationary cars, he saw a figure standing on the busy pavement. She stared across at him as the wave of commuters surged around her. He shuddered, her black cape marked her out as a portent of evil. What nonsense, he reprimanded himself.
And a thought whispered into his head. The Locus.
The figure had vanished among the streaming pedestrians.
‘It’s coming closer,’ the Brigadier muttered.
A voice from behind him said, ‘Perhaps you have something it needs, sir.’
The Brigadier stared into the driving-mirror. Young Daniel Hinton was sitting on the back seat in his school blazer.
Apparently the wretched boy was now ready to continue the conversation that he had so abruptly cut short on the beach.
‘After all this time? I doubt that, Hinton,’ he